We Can't All Be God
by flairina
Summary: Some of us are just... normal... no matter how much we wish otherwise.


**Note**: This was temporarily removed from the site (the day I wrote it no less), because I am an idiot and the circumstances under whose influence I wrote this were rather bad. However, after some thinking, I'm putting it back up (the day AFTER I wrote it), because my reasoning was flawed, as well as ridiculous, and I wouldn't want to have spent all that time on this for no reason. Thusly, this is back, and shall remain so.

I don't own TMOHS. I do own the anonymous narrator. Wish him luck, he needs it.

* * *

Today, like most days, I'm sitting at my desk in the middle of the classroom, wondering how long school is going to drag on today.

School.

I hate school.

School takes most of my time away from things it would be better spent working at.

Like searching for the paranormal. The supernatural. The fantastic and unusual. Whatever you want to call it.

Too bad I'm a failure at that life goal, at least thus far.

My mother is a realist. She has no patience for anything that isn't already accepted as fact. "I don't have time for that sort of nonsense" she'll always say. Trying to coexist with her can be difficult when she goes against everything I am trying my hardest to believe, because even if I don't tell her about my own beliefs, she unconsciously rips my shaky self-reassurances apart at every turn, just by announcing her lack of faith that anything supernatural exists.

Sometimes I pace my house at night, wondering if I'm really something important, and I just don't know it. Maybe I have latent powers of some sort, and I just need to wait for them to appear. Maybe I'll learn some day that I'm the reincarnation of some ancient magical king (or queen, because hell if I care by this point). Maybe my life is secretly a book, or a game, in some other dimension, and the creator just gets off on tormenting me by hanging such tempting concepts above my head, only to say "oh, but they might not really exist!". I yell at them in my head whenever I think this, doing everything from pleading to outright demanding that they give me something interesting, just in case that really is how my life works. Then I realize how objectively stupid my thoughts would sound to an outsider, and sober.

I always end up arguing with myself about how it's not right, nor realistic of me to believe I, out of everyone on the planet, gets to be special. But then, if everyone thought that way, humanity would have never progressed. Saying "it's impossible, no one's ever done it before" or "it's never happened before, why would it now" would have halted humanity's progress before the wheel even ever came about. So why shouldn't I think maybe I'm different? I've gone through this string of thoughts so many times I may as well have it engraved on my frontal lobe.

In what seemed like an answer to my prayers, I found out about lucid dreaming a while back, and tried to pick it up, thinking it might be just what I'd been looking for. After all, in a world of my own creation, I can do anything, be anything, meet anyone I want. Even if nothing I'm looking for really exists out there, I could just make my own rules within my own head. It sounded perfect.

That was five years ago, and I'm still trying, and failing, and crying my eyes out about my own lack of ability every so often, until I pick myself up and try again, because when has crying over something ever helped?

I look over to my left. Suzumiya Haruhi... the girl who everyone thinks is nuts. The crazy girl, who's always going on about stuff that can't possibly exist. Everyone laughs and gossips whenever her latest stunt is brought up, while I sit there and silently agree with her, quietly seething at everyone else. I hate this idiotic crowd mentality. Yeah, because none of YOU ever searched for monsters in your house just because you wanted to meet one, or wished that your parents would reveal that your family is actually magical every birthday cake wish you got. Why is her goal so "crazy" in everyone's eyes? Maybe my utter resentment of human nature is why I barely have any friends...

Not that I think she's perfect- far from it. It's rather annoying, in fact, that I can both admire and resent her simultaneously.

I agree with her on so many levels, and yet she is utterly infuriating. How can someone be so open to new things, and yet so narrow minded? All she ever talks about is aliens, time travelers, and espers, with the occasional mention of sliders. I sit in my seat every time wondering '_What about magic? What about clones? Cryptids? Androids? Shapeshifters? Spirits? Why are you so fixated on only those four?_' It's like she up and forgot there were other possible paranormal things to look for. I know she was looking for ghosts a while ago too, what happened to that? She's limited herself by focusing in on just a few things, and it makes me want to go smack her and remind her of the other possibilities.

Oftentimes I'll wonder why I don't just march right up to her and ask to join her Brigade. At least I'd be doing something, I'd feel as if I were making SOME sort of headway on my search for something interesting. At this point I hardly even care what it is, I just want something, anything I would consider out of the ordinary. Hell, I could probably improve the group by simply asking that we expand our search to everything else I always think of under the heading "paranormal/unusual". Then I remember just how things work in her little club, and restrain myself. There's no point.

How do I know this?

I followed them on one of their club "searches" once, just to see how they did things. No one noticed me, except perhaps the grayish-purple haired girl- Nagato, I think it was? If I was noticed, she didn't say anything anyways. I waited until they were all together, eager to see if anything she said could be applied to my own search for the unusual, or if perhaps I really should join her "club", regardless of the consequences.

Then Suzumiya just told everyone to split up into teams and search the city, and my hopes crumbled. That was all she did. She didn't say how, she didn't say what to look for, she didn't give them any more than "search". At first I thought it was just because everyone already knew how to do things. But upon following the group that didn't contain the Brigade leader, they walked... to the library. They did nothing but read, and by the point that they headed back I had seen enough already. She didn't give them any direction, and thus they didn't act on it. Suzumiya Haruhi is a horrible, horrible leader.

Joining her brigade would be utterly pointless. The way she does things, she'll never find anything. And she's too headstrong to listen to someone like me. Joining a club that isn't even recognized as such, especially when I KNOW it won't make any progress, will do nothing but get me in trouble. Unlike Suzumiya, who pretty much looks bored every class, I have to work for my grades. Even if I wanted to join her, I'd probably just get in hot water with my parents for joining an "extracurricular" that gives me no credit later on, especially when my mom inevitably found out about its "useless" nature. I don't get where the girl gets all her free time from, even if she doesn't study- let alone the other four members of that brigade. Maybe they just have less demanding parents than I do.

Suzumiya Haruhi... my feelings are such a mess when it comes to her. Not in any sort of romantic way- heh, not even close. I utterly hate the way she does things, and yet... I can't help but wish I was her, or at least like her. I would have my enthusiasm back. I would have the ability to draw other people towards my goals no matter how I had to do it. I would somehow avoid getting in any more trouble than a simple detention, no matter WHAT I did wrong. Sure, I would be blissfully unaware of how ineffective my own methods are, but my life would be so much better... Suzumiya doesn't know how good she's got it. She never seems to hit that point of hopelessness, the point where you just break down over how ineffective your efforts are. I tell myself all the time that it isn't hopeless, that there is every likelihood something supernatural WILL show up eventually... and my brain argues back, telling me how stupid I am to think my life should be any different from the millions of others who wish the same thing. Suzumiya apparently is immune to that, and I envy her for that trait.

My actions feel meaningless, and I have no idea what to do about it. I've done everything I can think of that I can do without looking insane. I stay up at night researching ki adepts, and psychics, and magic, and trying to maybe find that one lucid dream technique I haven't yet tried, the one that might finally work. My attempts at actually utilizing that research all seem for naught, and I never get anywhere. I tell myself for the umpteenth time that my own expectations of failure are at fault, and that I need to have a more positive attitude, but how can I do that when I've experienced nothing BUT failure...?

Heh, I even grew my hair out just in case Suzumiya was on to something, one of the only choices I can say was a good one regardless of its effects, because if I do say so myself, I make a pretty good bishonen. But, what did it accomplish beside from making my mom yell at me about how I won't be able to keep that hair in the work world? Nothing. Of course it did nothing. I don't know why I thought that girl might actually accomplish something by changing her _hairstyle_.

I don't know why I thought I might either...

I drift out of introspection and focus back on the classroom. Also to my left is the classmate everyone knows as Kyon. I have no idea what his real name is, even the teachers call him that. His apathy is matched only by his ability for sarcasm. Yet Suzumiya drags him along on every little excursion for reasons I can't even begin to fathom. Him, I just plain resent. How can he be so blase about Suzumiya's goals when she's sometimes even doing that dragging along in the literal sense? Even if I think her methods are questionable, I certainly wouldn't be acting like THAT if I was in his place. My guess is he's just one of those types that just doesn't think there could possibly be something like what she and I are looking for out there. So the ever remaining question is, WHY does she even want him around? And...why do I even care? None of this affects me.

The teacher is still droning on about something that I just can't seem to make myself care about. I'm not even gonna try this time.

I lean back in my chair, my mind made up to stop reflecting on my failures. Today is one of the "down" days, meaning I'm on the downward path back to a crash before I get motivated again. God if I don't hate those. Whine, whine, whine, good LORD I hate moping, and being unable to stop myself from moping. Maybe tonight will be different. I'll put on my headphones, play some music, and hide under a blanket, pretending that I'm in a different, more interesting reality, until I fall asleep- maybe for once my dream will be lucid. Or maybe reality will actually become what I'm thinking of while I'm not looking. Maybe...

Okay, well, most likely when I wake up nothing will have changed, because reality doesn't seem to dance to my whims the way it seems too with Suzumiya, who can seemingly do anything EXCEPT accomplish her primary goal. But even if life denies me everything else I wish for, at least I can try.

And I will never stop trying.

* * *

AN: Got the idea and wrote it while slightly depressed, so apologies for the somber tone. I just wanted to write something about a classmate (only partially based on me, I assure you) who "sympathizes" with Haruhi, and wants the same things, but is... well, NOT her, and probably won't be getting what he wants. Certainly not with THAT attitude at least- I almost wish I could smack my own character over the head and tell them to go join that brigade right now, misgivings or not. Even if the other people WEREN'T actually what he's looking for, having even one other person support you in a goal, ANY goal, is a major help. So, narrator? *bonk* Stop whining and do something! The moral of the story is that moping gets you nowhere! You know that, go join that brigade right now!


End file.
